


the fires still burning

by hydianway



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Betrayal, Comrades in Arms, F/F, Mission Fic, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-24 23:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10751964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/pseuds/hydianway
Summary: When Sabine and Ketsu break into an Imperial base together to steal a secret weapons prototype, Ketsu doesn't expect how much fighting with Sabine unreservedly on her side will affect her.





	the fires still burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExtraPenguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/gifts).



> This fic plays fast and loose with potential Imperial security measures, as well as (possibly) the Rebels timeline-- please imagine this takes place some time after Ketsu shows up in season two.

The corridor of the Imperial Base was rapidly fillingwith Stormtroopers, backing Ketsu and Sabine into a corner by the door they’d just blasted the control panel floor. They looked at each other, and moved to opposite sides of the corridor, where they had at least a little cover, and a fair vantage point from which to shoot at their assailants.

They were both good shots, and it was almost uncanny, how well they co-ordinated their blaster passes, so that they barely ever went for the same trooper or wasted a shot, or failed to protect each other when it looked like someone had a chance of shooting the other.

Ketsu almost laughed; it was so easy to be in battle with Sabine at her side, working in tandem like they were born to it. In a certain sense, Ketsu supposed they were born to it— fighting, at least, if not each other, proud daughters of a planet that had made battle into a way of life or an art or both.

Before Ketsu knew it, the corridor was clear of Stormtroopers who weren’t unconscious on the floor, and she and Sabine both were breathing hard. Sabine barely had to signal to let Ketsu know that they were on the move again, down the corridor and to the elevator to the left.

It wasn’t always like this, Ketsu thought. She remembered back to the first night they’d spent together, after she’d joined the Rebellion, when things had started to change between them truly, trust being slowly rebuilt after Ketsu’s abrupt severing of their bond and years of estrangement.

— — — — — — — —

‘You left me for dead,’ Sabine had said, turning on her side to face Ketsu as they lay in bed.

‘I didn’t have any choice,’ said Ketsu, voice oddly subdued in the near-darkness.

‘We _always_ have a choice,’ Sabine said, quietly but with no less conviction for it. She took Ketsu’s hand and laced their fingers together. ‘And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that too.’

‘That may be so, Sabine, but don’t you ever think that the choices I made were easy.’

Sabine took a breath, loud against the backdrop of silence. ‘Neither were the choices I made,’ said Sabine, unable to keep the high note of petulance out of her voice. ‘I forgive you, but don’t make excuses for yourself. We’ve all done things we didn’t want to, or that we didn’t think were right even while we were doing them, or that we regretted later. I built weapons for the Empire! Weapons they used on our people, Ketsu.’

She took in another breath. ‘You helped me get out of there, and I think I still owe you for that, but you’ve also nearly killed me more than once over since.’

‘I know, said Ketsu, holding her hand tighter. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She didn’t know what else to say, or what else she could do.

‘I know.’ Sabine repeated her words back to her, and Ketsu imagined she could see her smile even through the dark. ‘I meant it though, when I said that I forgave you.’

‘And I meant my apology,’ said Ketsu, switching to Mandalorian. She imagined she could see Sabine smiling again. Sabine smiled a lot more now that she was with the Rebellion, Ketsu had noticed. It suited her.

‘Well, at least now we’re both on the same page,’ said Sabine, also in Mandalorian, and with a much lighter tone.

‘At least that,’ said Ketsu, and they both laughed. Ketsu pulled their clasped hands closer to her lips, and kissed each of Sabine’s fingers. ‘Now, what shall we _do_?’

‘Oh, I think bringing down the Empire sounds like a great next step.’

‘Well, that’s not a problem, for two Mandalorians,’ Ketsu said. ‘Is it?’

‘Not a chance,’ said Sabine, and they laughed again.

— — — — — — — —

They were both breathing hard as they waited for the elevator to take them down to the thirtieth level, where the cache of secret, deadly Imperial weapons prototypes that she and Sabine had to steal were being held. Ketsu risks a quick smile up at Sabine, only to find the same expression on her face that she used to get back in their bounty hunting days, whenever they were getting close to getting away with something.

‘According to the protocols of this base, this area should be only lightly guarded,’ she said, reading off her wristpad. ‘Both because even half of the Imps on this base don’t know what’s down here, and because the rest of the _Ghost_ crew are upstairs, doing the obvious and trying to steal the blueprints for the proton missiles.’

The lift slowed, and they both pressed themselves to either side of the door, in case of ambush. The doors opened with a soft _whoosh_ , and cautiously, they peered out along the corridor. It was sterile and grey, as Imperial corridors often were, but there was no-one in sight. Ketsu and Sabine exited the lift, and made their way quickly down the corridors, navigating the way to the weapons by the map on Sabine’s wrist.

‘Right,’ she said, as they reached a heavily armoured door. ‘There’s a high chance that once we get into this place, an alarm will go off and there’ll be Stormtroopers crawling all over us, so we need to move fast. Do you have your lifting gear?’

‘Yep,’ said Ketsu. ‘And we meet Hera three floors down, where there’s a secondary landing pad.’

‘Sabine nodded. ‘Exactly. You start work on getting us into here, and I’ll tell her to be on standby for pick up.’

‘Great,’ said Ketsu, and started programming in the override codes for the security on this base. By some miracle, the door opened after the first three, the minimum number of override codes one usually needed to breach this level of security, and Ketsu moved quickly but calmly inside while Sabine stood guard on the door.

Ketsu almost thought they’d get away with it when she started to pull the weapons prototypes out behind her. Then a klaxon started to ring out through the room, and the door started to close. It was a slow closing door— fortunately, or Ketsu would never have made it through in one piece at all— but it took an almost superhuman burst of speed for Ketsu to get herself and her cargo through.

There was a moment, just as she was about to make the last push, where she saw Sabine’s horrified face on the other side. It was the exact same look she’d had the moment she realised that Ketsu’s double crossing that last day was of _her_ , not the Black Sun operatives they’d, together, been supposed to be working to bring down.

The impression was so strong that it nearly knocked her off her feet with a wave of guilt, but somehow she leaped through the door with her cargo in tow, nicked at the last minute of the door's closing but otherwise unharmed.

— — — — — — — —

Ketsu remembered the moment she’d decided to betray Sabine almost as well as the moment she’d actually gone through with it. In her mind, perhaps it meant the same.

She and Sabine had been working with the Black Sun for a few weeks only when one of the women further up the chain had pulled her aside and told her she knew exactly what she and her _little friend_ were doing.

‘Look, kid,’ she said. ‘Your friend’s trouble. Help us, and we’ll cut you in on the profits. If you won’t, we’ll make sure that something much worse happens to the both of you.’

Ketsu had known right away that she was going to help them. She also knew what Sabine would have done in the same situation: spat in the woman’s face, probably, or threatened her with something vicious but ultimately futile. Sabine, the prodigy weapons maker and uncontested master of thinking on her feet, might have actually managed to get out of there. Ketsu couldn’t. Maybe she wasn’t smart as she wanted to be, or maybe she was just too scared. She was backed into a corner, after all— betray your best friend, the only person you have left in the world, and you can have a share of the profits. Don’t, and you’ll die, and she probably will too.

‘I’ll help you,’ she said, possibly souring herself on those words forever, to say nothing of her own self-estimation.

Ketsu tried not to believe that certain acts could change you fundamentally as a person, but if anything had changed her, it had been this. Before that moment she had been Ketsu Onyo, bounty hunter and loyal friend to Sabine Wren: after it, she was Ketsu Onyo, mercenary and traitor to all she held dear.

— — — — — — — —

She and Sabine somehow managed to get to the stairwell at the end of the corridor before any Stormtroopers arrived on the scene, and they were dragging the weapons out of the door and onto the some level as the landing pad by the time there were any within actual range.

‘I’ll cover you,’ said Sabine, as they made their way to what they knew was the outside door, still only fighting off one or two Stormtroopers, both of whom looked too scared to get much closer. By the time Sabine had opened it, there were far more white-armoured men in sight, and once they were on the landing pad there was nothing for it but to make a run for it for it.

They sprinted across the landing pad to the loading ramp of Phantom under heavy fire, dodging behind cargo containers when they can, and Sabine covering Ketsu, whose ability to shoot or defend herself was limited by the weight she has dragging behind her. The days on this planet must be shorter than average, because it had been, apparently, high noon when they arrived here only and hour and a half ago, but the sky was already orange with dusk.

Sabine’s armoured form was silhouetted against the sunset, the pale tips of her hair catching the light as if they were aflame. She took a shot, and Ketsu whipped her head around to see a third Stormtrooper go down, then a fourth. The _Phantom_ was only fifty metres away now, so close she could almost feel the metal beneath her feet.

She and Sabine must have had the same thought, because they both put on a burst of speed, and they were just dragging their containers up the loading ramp when a second wave of Stormtroopers appeared, these ones pulling behind them some kind of heavy artillery gun. Sabine raced up the ramp ahead of her and pressed the button that would pull it back insidewhile Ketsu was still on it, sending her tumbling forward into the hold as Hera took the ship off the ground.

The containers with the weapons landed more or less untouched on the ship’s decking, but Ketsu landed on Sabine. They sprawled over the floor like they had used to do when one of them bested the other in their hand-to-hand sparring sessions, sweaty and exhilarated and pleased above all to to be sparring with each other.

Ketsu has no idea how to voice any of the emotions that were running so strongly through her mind it felt nowas if they were buzzing in her veins, so she simply crawled forward on hands and knees to kiss Sabine, hard, and on the mouth.

Sabine grunted in appreciation and pulled Ketsu in closer for a moment, then she flipped their positions so she was straddling Ketsu on the deck, and leaned back down to kiss her in earnest.

Force,’ she said, between kisses, ‘you have no idea how much I’ve missed you.’

Ketsu moaned as Sabine did something particularly interesting with her tongue, and she just managed to gasp out. ‘No, actually, I think I do.’

Sabine stopped kissing her, a startlingly naive expression of surprise passing over her face as briefly as the flash of light around you before you entered hyperspace. Ketsu reached up to tangle a hand in her hair, then the ship juddered and pulled them apart once more.

‘Well, I suppose you would,’ Sabine said, seeming to shake herself, and she stood, pulling Ketsu up with her. ’Now come on, I think we’d actually better help Hera with this mission.’

‘We’d probably better,’ said Ketsu, following behind her.


End file.
